STORIES
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DANCERS CAPTURE AND CHANGE AN AUDIENCE
By Amy Zukeran
The stage is dark, silent. Without warning, a single hot spotlight dramatically outlines a woman, strong and erect in white dance tights - a flaring candle on a moonless night.
She begins a lamentation in the gospel style of call and response. Her words, with their emphasis on alliteration and repetition, challenge audience members to examine their own attitudes toward HIV and AIDS.
As the piece climbs in intensity, a cutting anger rises in the dancer's voice. "Why?" she asks, slamming her fist into an open palm, "why must words be so bitter?" The woman's once graceful movements shift to hard, sharp and pained ones.
Welcome to the world of the Urban Bush Women, an internationally recognized, New York-based dance troupe led by FSU dance professor Jawole Willa Jo Zollar.
Zollar, 48, earned a master's degree in dance from FSU in 1980 and founded the company in New York four years later. The name, she said, was chosen to "evoke a strong image" that goes beyond naming the company for its founder. She is now UBW artistic director and company member.
The name is just one sign of her belief in community. It touches everything she and the troupe create. The birthing of new dance pieces is shared among company members.
"It's collaborative," said Zollar, who joined FSU's faculty in 1996. "I'm the catalyst. I come in with the initial idea. We might improvise to find the idea, or sometimes I come in with material that's already developed. But we are all involved.''
The Urban Bush Women have performed around the world with regular stops in Tallahassee.
The works - a unique blend of socially powerful, exciting, modern dance pieces with roots in African American traditions - often evoke strong emotions throughout the theater. And rather than alienating its audiences, the company has been enthusiastically embraced by the dance world and academe as well as local audiences.
Performances regularly sell out with an astonishing mix of race, class, age and sex snapping up tickets. One audience member sums up the appeal.
"When I saw them, I liked them right away,'' said Asia Hittner, a 15-year old student waiting outside a dance class for a chance to talk to one of the dancers. "They're talking to all of us, African, whites, everyone. And how 'we gotta educate to elevate so ignorance can be erased,' " Hittner said, repeating a line from a recent UBW Summer Dance Institute performance.
With Zollar's presence on campus, Tallahassee is now a part-time summer stomping ground for the New York dancers. Last year, the troupe partnered with FSU, and the dance institute bloomed. Interest was overwhelming. Some classes were forced outdoors onto Landis Green because 150 people would show up, Zollar said.
"I think the key to the great participation is that people respond to her integrity and honesty," said Libby Patenaude, chairwoman of FSU's dance department. "It's very real."
In its second year, the UBW Summer Dance Institute has taken flight. The intensive, four-week series of dance classes and workshops attracts dancers, artists and organizers who want to learn to use dance and other arts for social change.
"It's been something that I've wanted to do for a long time," Zollar said. "Because many times I have meetings with people who do this kind of work, and we all have gray hair. And we're all like, `You know what, we better start passing this information on.'
There aren't many dance academies that offer tips on surviving on $5,000 a year. Or staying focused on effecting social change while working three jobs.
"One of the overriding objectives of the summer institute is that the participants don't come to be preached or taught to," Patenaude said. "The philosophy is to learn from one another. The person teaching the class has as much to learn from the students as the students have to learn from the one teaching the class."
The number of faculty and staff members who work alongside UBW reflects a sense of community Zollar continually evokes through her teaching, actions or work.
"There's the idea that we are a community and that community isn't a homogeneous one,'' Zollar said minutes before another dance institute class was to start. "We're a diverse and multi-faceted community and we really have to take that into account.
"You know last year at the keynote address, Bernie Sliger said, 'You put out the call and you see who comes,' " Zollar added. "I think the overwhelming response we've received says that in this community, dance can play a greater role because people want it.''